5 years Since The Murder of George Floyd

May 25

in 2020, from George Floyd’s senseless Murder, came Hope for change, accountability, and reckoning. What has Rupture and Repair looked like?

Image ID: A collage of flowers surround George Floyd. A Black man wearing a black hoodie, with an ever so slight smile pulling at the right corner of his mouth as you are looking, and a short hair cut. the text on the image reads "George Floyd should still be alive” in white block lettering with a black background.

Today, May 25, 2025, marks five years since the brutal murder of George Floyd. Five years since the world watched in horror as a man's life was senselessly taken under the knee of state violence. The tool of state sanctioned violence this time? A cop, Derek Chauvin, acting undisrupted by other officers or members of the public, with the authority of policing. Five years since a huge rupture tore through the fabric of our nation, exposing deep-seated wounds of racism, systemic brutality, and a chilling disregard for Black lives.

For many of us, the immediate aftermath felt like an earthquake. The ground beneath us shifted, and the air filled with the cries of collective heartbreak and the roar of well-earned anger. Our hearts shattered but determined to demand a different future and ready to build it. The world promised change, promised accountability, promised a reckoning. We poured into the streets, even right here in Oklahoma - especially right here, in a state where Oklahoma City Police Department remains one of the deadliest police forces in the world. Especially right here, where district attorneys and law makers are banding together to try and further infringe on tribal sovereignty they were finally forced to reckon with after the Supreme Court decision in McGirt. Especially right here, in the place where Betty Shelby killed Terence Crutcher, where white men took to the streets and murdered Black Tulsans while burning Greenwood to the ground, where our government responded to protests not with curiosity, but with more authoritarian punishments that threaten our fundamental rights to free speech.

What justice is there in perpetuating cycles of harm?

The officers responsible were tried, convicted, and sentenced to the very system of violence they previously maintained. But the "justice" of a verdict can never truly repair the void left by a life stolen. I mean, can there really be “justice” given by a system made to disappear anyone that comes in contact with it while doing so much damage to entire communities? What justice is there in perpetuating cycles of harm? And as the initial tremors subsided, we have watched the state of the nation and the world that George Floyd was so wrongfully snatched from, worsen, in so many ways.

In the weeks after George Floyd was murdered, folks, less encumbered by the normal constraints of capitalism in the early waves of COVID-19 response, practiced meaningful community, demanding, if not justice, real and meaningful change. We demanded divestment from policing, we demanded abolition of the carceral state and the prison industrial complex. Folks rallied in the streets and in municipal buildings, where we saw folks become experts in municipal budgets that disproportionately fund policing above any other meaningful community needs or supports. Yet, five years later, few folks have sustained that action. It’s much harder, when we root our advocacy in outrage and grief, to keep going. In the five years since George Floyd was murdered by police, we've seen a rising tide of authoritarianism, a hardening of hearts against the most vulnerable, and a relentless assault on the very freedoms we fight to protect.

This reality has broken our hearts, again and again. The persistent violence against Black and Brown bodies, the escalating attacks on our 2STGNC+ siblings, the brutal dehumanization of migrants, the ongoing genocide in Palestine funded by our own tax dollars, the destruction of our planet to build cop cities, the continually expanding investment in the institution of policing and the criminal punishment system—each new injustice is another blow, another rupture.

Yet, here we are. Still standing. Still fighting. Still heartbroken. Still repairing. Still remembering. Still bearing witness. Still coming together. Still committed to the future where we all have the safety to thrive, everywhere we call home. I've been drawn lately to a quote from Hanif Abdurraqib, who writes:

"...in my late teens and early twenties I felt, selfishly, that the worst parts of the world existed only in the small radius of my various heartbreaks. And, to the credit of those heartbreaks, some of them were worthy of that lie. What I love about the heart is that it’s capable of breaking in infinite ways; may we never live long enough to experience all of them, but may we live long enough to experience the ways the heart can repair itself for subsequent breakings. The cycle of rupture and repair is a requirement of living, a cost of surviving, something that goes hand in hand with another reality of survival: that, throughout your life, you may not only lose people but also gain them." - (In Defense of Despair 2025)

This sentiment resonates deeply with the work we do at Freedom Oklahoma, and with the very essence of survival in a world that consistently inflicts rupture. Our hearts have broken, time and again, for George Floyd, for Daniel Davis Aston, for Fern Galindo, for Nex Benedict, for Aubrey Dameron, for Mahmoud Khalil, for Hind Rajab, for all our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, for our neighbors being stolen by ICE, for our neighbors facing the onslaught of hostile legislation, for the growing list of names and communities who don’t yet realize they’re next.

This repair happens…in the loud, unwavering demands for justice. It happens when we refuse to succumb to despair, even as the storm rages.

But just as the heart is capable of infinite breakings, it is also capable of infinite repair. Not a repair that erases the wound, but one that strengthens us for the next challenge. This repair happens in the intentional, everyday actions of community care. It happens in the loud, unwavering demands for justice. It happens when we refuse to succumb to despair, even as the storm rages.

At Freedom Oklahoma, our work is a testament to this cycle of rupture and repair. When policies target our 2SLGBTQ+ youth, our hearts break, but we respond by expanding the Freedom Sessions, creating safe spaces for youth, educators, and caregivers. When the "crimmigration machine" disappears a green card holder for speaking out against injustice, our hearts break, but we mobilize, demanding Mahmoud Khalil's freedom and reminding everyone what it means to protect each other. When Indigenous relatives go missing or are murdered, our hearts break, but we follow the lead of Indigenous matriarchs, of MMIWG2S+ orgs like NOISE and Aubrey Dameron’s family, advocating for Kasey's Law and Ida's Law, building community safety mechanisms while still making the space to honor and grieve the loss of life.

We are committed to this repair work not through performative gestures, but through concrete action:

Fighting HIV criminalization and working towards retroactive, repeal and repair efforts that help folks get free.
Expanding our legislative tracker to hold politicians accountable through disrupting the power of withholding information from constituencies.
Funding zines and supporting grassroots media to share knowledge on our terms.
Ensuring our interns are paid, that job posts including salary amounts, embodying our principles financially as best we’re able.
Creating spaces for collective joy and art, because revolution lives in our ability to dream and connect.
Engaging in growing collaborative community spaces, like Home Base, and continuing to invite people to commit to unlearning and learning their own and societal prejudices and the systems built upon that hate.
Investing in community directly, like through scholarships that help folks overcome financial obstacles to correcting their names.
Making restorative justice a community practice, by hosting orgs like RJIOK in community spaces.
Masking and providing masks in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and surges of measles outbreaks.
Speaking our truth, rooted in values, because while the funding we receive is put to great use, we won’t make our community small or compromise on behalf of the most marginalized and excluded for popularity or dollars.

The cost of survival, as Abdurraqib notes, includes rupture and repair. It also means losing people, but gaining them. In the devastating wake of loss, we find new comrades, new allies, new community that strengthens our resolve. We are building the future where all of us have the safety, community, and resources to thrive, everywhere we call home.

Five years after George Floyd's murder, the fight is far from over.

The landscape of injustice has mutated, but our hearts, though broken, are repaired in community, and ready for subsequent breakings – and for the subsequent fights. This Sunday, we remember George Floyd, and we recommit to the ongoing work of justice, knowing that our collective survival depends on our unwavering commitment to one another.

Five years later, it’s still Black Lives Matter. Five years later, it’s still no justice, no peace, no racist police. Five years later, it’s still divest, defund, dismantle the racist institution of policing and the racist prison industrial complex. Five years later, and George Floyd should still be here. There’s no justice for those who were unjustly killed, but there is the work of honoring them in our fights for collective liberation, in building a world where their deaths would be unimaginable.

We free us. We care for us. We keep building. Until we’re all free. Until we all have the resources, community, and safety to thrive. In Minneapolis. In Oklahoma. Across Indian Country. Any- and every- where we call home.